Beginnings

PowerWells is a social impact startup that rose out of a mainstay of the global startup scene – the Techstars Startup Weekend

On the Friday night of the competition, a friend shared the difficulties of charging mobile phones, for people living in the remote parts of Indonesia

Over the weekend, the team hacked together a prototype and a loose plan of how to get electric light and mobile phone charging to people living in remote communities

The prototype was a bucket filled with lithium ion batteries, fed by a small solar panel. With the key difference from other available products, being that it was all made from recycled materials

That Sunday afternoon, they won the competition

Over the next two weeks, they had flown from Brisbane to Jakarta, sourced all the parts from local recyclers, made another prototype in a hotel room, drove for ten hours to a village that didn’t have electricity and installed the system

Since, they have gone from strength to strength with a successful crowdfunding campaign, two months in Indonesia for community consultation, installing another ten systems and have entered into the Impact Academy startup accelerator program